


The Accident

by NerdsNeedLoveToo



Category: Hit the Floor (TV)
Genre: Angst, Car Accident, Hurt/Comfort, I'm really sorry, M/M, dammit, i won't do it again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-21 20:12:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14292543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NerdsNeedLoveToo/pseuds/NerdsNeedLoveToo
Summary: Everyone was getting ready for the pre-Thanksgiving family festival. The players had returned home to a bank of limos waiting at the airport to take them to the bash. No one expected the pile-up or what happened after.





	The Accident

**Author's Note:**

> I promise I won't write another death fic in this fandom again. But this was buzzing around in my head, and I had to get it out before I could write the story I want to write. Constructive criticism is very welcome and appreciated.
> 
> Also, I don't own the show, the characters, or anything about any of them. I might own an OC or two. I'm just borrowing the rest.

He doesn’t remember the impact, but he tasted it shortly after waking.

Smoke, cinder, and blood filled Jude’s mouth as he tried to figure out what had happened. The splitting headache made it slow business, as he looked around. Everything was dark, but a faint sliver of light leaking in from outside. The single, razor thin ray landed on something, and Jude wiped his eyes to see a hand.

And it all comes flooding back.

“Gideon?” he called in a panic, shifting to sit up. Pain wrenches through his knee, and he cried out. He’d never felt pain that sharp before, and knew without asking something was broken.

“Gideon?” he asked, trying to slide the three feet.

“Jude?” Lionel thickly called from several feet away.

“Are you okay?” Jude asked, never losing focus on his boyfriend. Fuck… his fiancé. Jesus. Shit. Zero had proposed. They’d been laughing, and he’d been putting on a show. He barely registered Lionel’s quiet, “I think so,” when Jelena weakly tossed out, “Hey, don’t ask about the bitch CEO you all hate.”

“Sorry,” Jude murmured, now close enough that he could touch Zero is he stretched. He didn’t know where the light suddenly came from, until he glanced to the other end of the upside-down limo, and found Lionel holding out her cell phone with the flashlight blazing.

Blinking at the blinding light, Jude turned his face away. The light felt like a sledgehammer to his skull.

And he saw Zero.

“Oh God. Help!” yelled, ending in a coughing fit.

In the light, he could see Zero – blood running rivulets through his hair and pooling near his head, where he lay on his side. But that wasn’t what drew his attention. A piece of metal was embedded in Zero’s chest, propping him up as he lay on his side, tilted forward.

Frantic, Jude ignored the pain and slid up against the side of the vehicle, slowly turning Zero onto his back. He damn near wept when the blond man in his arms groaned.

“Jude?”

Zero’s voice barely reached whisper level, but Jude heard him.

“Car crashed. Just hang on, okay?” Jude’s hands trembled as he pulled Zero closer to him, propping his head into his lap, and trying to wipe the blood out of the other man’s eyes.

“ ‘urts.”

“I know, babe,” Jude murmured, caressing a pale cheek. “I know it hurts.”

Again, he shouted, “Help us!”

“You gotta know somethin’,” Zero slurred, looking up at his lover. “ ‘Kay?”

“Hey,” Jude murmured again, “I know all I need to. You love me, and I love you, stupid.”

Something in Zero’s voice pitched low into Jude’s belly, sending spikes of fear up his spine. Zero swallowed, and with a slightly stronger voice said, “My lawyer. He’s got my will.”

Jude’s breath hitched, and his eyes started to water, because looking down into Zero’s face, he saw blood start forming around the mouth. And he had yet to hear a single siren.

“No no no. Not doing this, babe.”

“Shhhh,” Zero whispered with a smile. “’is okay. Gotta have you. Never knew I could have somethin’ good.” A sharp cough racked his body, and Zero arched, moving the metal fragment. For the first time, the blond looked down and gave a sound almost like a harrumph. “Stupid way to go,” he muttered. Then he smiled, like he just witnessed a miracle.

“You said yes,” he giggled.

“Yes, I did,” Jude confirmed. “And you promised me a big wedding. Remember?”

“Only the best fer you,” Zero agreed, besotted. Then, as if he suddenly remembered where he was, he looked around. Jelena had taken her phone out and laid it on the ground to illuminate at least some of the vehicle’s interior. He quietly called out, “ ‘Lena? Lionel?”

Lioinel was biting her lip, trying to not to cry as the scene unfolded. It was Jelena who quietly replied, “Yes, Zero?”

“Can’t tell anyone. ‘Kay?”

Neither woman knew what he was talking about so they both nodded, eventually voicing their replies.

“Gotta take care ‘f m’ sister, ‘kay?” Zero asked, looking up. “Only trust _you_ with ‘er.”

“I’ll take care of Laura,” Jude whispered, not noticing the tears tracking down his face until they dripped off into Zero’s hair, mixing with the blond man’s blood. In a rush, blood flowed from Zero’s mouth, and the blond coughed more up, choking, and causing Jude to panic.

By now he could hear sirens in the distance, and the women began to scream for help.

Then someone was banging on the side of the car, yelling for the jaws of life.

But it was too late.

“Love you, stupid,” slipped out of Zero’s mouth, he closed his eyes, and was gone.

It took only three minutes to pull the limousine open enough for emergency personnel to get inside. They took Zero out first, with Jude following, never letting go of Zero’s hand.

Pete Davenport ran back through what had to be the most miserable pile-up he’d seen in recent years, with several players on his heels. The Devils were throwing a party for the players, staff, and their families. So Jude had ordered a set of eight stretch limousines to meet them at the airport and reunite the players with their families at the arena for a festival to celebrate the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.

Only two limousines had been behind Pete’s, and the domino of cars had begun crashing just two vehicles behind his when a sports car darted in front of a semi with a heavy load. The driver had pulled off as soon as Pete yelled for it, and the coach and players had begun working their way back into the fray on foot.

He’d found one limo carrying players. It had swerved and dropped into the median of the divided highway. Aside from a couple bumps and bruises, everyone seemed okay. It took them twenty minutes to find the other limo.

It lay flipped on its top, the side partially ripped out, with people being pulled from the wreckage.

Pete saw Lionel first, followed by Jelena. When Zero had asked Pete to have Lionel ride with them, he’d confided with an airy, cocky attitude that Jude would want to show Lionel the engagement ring he was about to receive before anyone else.

Knowing only that Zero had asked Lionel to ride with him and Jude, Jelena had haughtily invited herself into the mix. Zero found it hilarious that she’d be there to watch him pop the question.

Both women were standing. _Thank God_ , Pete thought.

Then they moved.

By then the other players had come up behind him and watched as Jude and Zero were lifted onto gurneys… and a sheet laid over Zero. It was like a horror story, watching the sheet slowly unfold bit by bit until it covered Zero’s face, shielding even the hand Jude held from sight.

Behind him, Pete heard someone vomit.

Most players were already at the arena and didn’t find out until it hit the news an hour later. Jelena opted to handle the press from the hospital steps. Lionel and Pete camped in the waiting room to hear news on Jude. He’d been rushed to surgery when his tibia had sliced open a vein on transport.

Without changing out of her ripped gown and covered in Zero’s blood, Jelena called a press conference where she confirmed that Zero had been declared dead, and their Executive Vice President of Business Operations was undergoing surgery to repair extensive damage to his tibia and kneecap.

One of the veteran reporters asked, “Will Jude be okay?” Those who had been around awhile had come to admire the young man who seemed to level Zero out.

“They’d just gotten engaged,” Jelena said. “What do _you_ think?”

\--------------------------------

Jude planned the funeral from his hospital bed.

At first, Lionel had tried to stop him, as had Pete. Even Sloan had given her two cents on the subject. They stopped when he finally looked Jelena in the eye and said, “I have nothing to do but think. If I can’t do something, you’ll be burying me next to him.”

No one doubted his sincerity.

\--------------------------------

The graveside service was somber, and very few were invited. A dozen in total. The headstone had no name, because Jude couldn’t stand to carve Zero into stone, like it meant something to Gideon. And he didn’t dare put Gideon’s full name – something only Jude and a single private investigator were privy to. Instead, it read, “I love you, stupid.”

They gave Jude time at the grave alone, and in the distance Lionel worried her lower lip, watching as the wheelchair-bound man reached out and stroked the casket. He stayed like that, his back to them, for half an hour.

They were kind enough to wait until he was gone before they lowered his lover into the ground.

\-------------------------------------------

Jude once told Zero that he’d make a great Catholic. The basketball player had essentially lived his entire life buried in guilt – guilt over not being good enough to love, guilt over not saving his sister, and guilt over wasting so much time fighting what he felt for people. Both half-drunk, Jude had nailed Zero’s persona so accurately, that Zero put his head on Jude’s shoulder… and cried. That was the only time Jude had seen him shed tears.

A wake seemed fitting. That it was opulent and gluttonous seemed fitting too.

From where he sat in the corner, Jude watched as liquor flowed easily in the Playground. Pictures of Zero in Devil uniform adorned the walls. The PR team had put together a series of Zero’s best plays and had the video running on a repeating loop. People who thought they knew him milled around, telling stories, and laughing.

He would’ve loved it as much as Jude hated it at that moment. It was Gideon he missed, not Zero.

While Jude dully watched those around him, it was Jelena of all people who watched _him_. In a twist of something truly fucked up, the woman had become Jude’s champion. Something had been bothering her since the accident, though.

“Why didn’t Zero want anyone knowing about his sister?” Jelena asked.

Jude had been expecting this question, just as he’d expected questions about Zero’s name and the gravestone. No one argued with him. He’d say no one talked to him, but that wasn’t true. It was he who’d stopped talking. What was there left to say?

“Help me to my office,” he quiet said, wheeling himself back from the table. One wrist still hurt like a bitch from the accident, so he quietly waited for Jelena to begin maneuvering him out the door.

Lionel, having seen them quietly leave, followed. She caught up in Jude’s office, and shut the door with a _snick_.

“Can you hand me the picture?” he asked Lionel, gesturing to the lone frame on his desk. And when she did, his breath caught at the sight of him and Zero on the beach. There’d been no paparazzi, just them. They’d walked along the water, ate ice cream from a vendor, and held hands in the sun. A passing stranger had been kind enough to snap the photo.

The women watched his face tighten, though, when he flipped the frame over. He popped the photo out of the frame, and picked up a piece of paper behind it.

A month before, the private detective had located a single photo of a seven year old Gideon holding his five year old sister’s hand. Both had red popsicle rings around their mouths and were smiling. That day had been special. They hadn’t had much to smile about in a couple years, but this moment captured their love, the way Laura looked up at Gideon with worship.

Jude had gotten prints made but kept this special slip of paper near one of the happiest moments of _his_ life. And that’s when Zero had begun talking about contacting his sister – when this reminder that not everything in their childhood had been dark and full of demons. The times with his sister had been filled with love.

Jude handed the picture to Jelena.

Both women could see the man they’d lost in the photo of the boy.

“He spent most of his life in foster care, being abused and neglected. That’s his sister. They took her away from him.”

When both women looked up, he continued, “No one knows. You can’t tell anyone. Her life got worse for several years when they took her. She was in a bad place for a long time. You can’t say a word. She doesn’t deserve that. Neither does he.”

“Does she know he’s gone?” Lionel asked, crouching down next to Jude.

When he looked at her, he said, “He didn’t contact her after finding her. He didn’t wanna make her life harder. Didn’t think he was worth it.” His breath hitched and he whispered, “He always believed he was worth his name. Finally started to believe different lately.”

Jelena had figured a long time ago that Zero had something pretty twisted in his background to make him change his persona the way most people change their underwear. Even before the accident, she’d begun to grudgingly admit that maybe the man she’d begun to see since that ridiculous post-game kiss might be real.

“Are you going to contact her?” Jelena asked. Having come from a shit childhood herself – just not quite this level of shit – she felt the weight of it. In any other circumstance, she’d be playing an angle. But even the queen bitch showed a good side now and then.

“I don’t know,” he replied with a wavering voice. “I don’t know what to do.”

“My advice?” Jelena offered, knowing damn good and well he’d ignore her, “is to find her, make sure she’s okay.”

Boy was she surprised when six weeks later he boarded a plane to Boston.

\---------------------------------------------

For all his travels, Jude had never been to Boston. He spent the first day orienting himself around Boston University. He walked down past Fenway Park, adjusting his parka against the bitter winter winds, and watched the bustle of life around him. He knew Laura lived with her adoptive parents in Hyde Park. Both worked blue collar jobs. They’d tried so hard to have a baby. Then they found Laura through the national adoption network and fell in love with the story of a sharp, witty pre-teen. She still lived with them as she finished her Social Services undergrad degree at BU. Zero had been puffed up and proud when he found out Laura had gotten a full ride scholarship.

“See? She’s a smart one. Always was,” he’d said with a grin. “Was reading _Cat in the Hat_ and _Green Eggs and Ham_ at five!” And hadn’t that just tugged at Jude’s heartstrings?

The afternoon had long turned to evening when Jude made his way up the sidewalk to the Victorian home. It had aged well, although the front porch needed a good coat of paint. Even worn, though, the small touches like a couple wicker chairs out front, and a mismatched table made it look like home.

He was almost shaking when he made his way up the front steps and pressed the doorbell.

A middle-aged woman with a dark ponytail and sporting a Bruins hockey jersey answered the door, laughing. She was thin, average height, with freckles smattering her nose. Her green eyes watched him curiously when she asked, “Can I help ya?”

“Um… yeah… I’m looking for Laura?” He hadn’t intended to make it sound like a question, and cleared his throat uncomfortably.

“Hold on,” and the woman retreated, shutting the door.

It took a couple minutes before a middle-age man with a round face, receding hairline, and laughlines at the corners of his eyes opened the door again and eyed him warily.

“What do you want with my daughter?” the man asked.

Jude nearly backpedaled off the porch, but he caught himself. He needed to do this, and he steeled himself. “Sir… I don’t know how to start. But Laura has a brother.”

Jude’s eyes watered, and he looked down at his feet. How the hell was he going to explain?

The man stood back from the door, sighed, and said, “I guess you better come in.”

Jude followed him into the house, walking past a staircase, and toward the back of the house. There Laura’s father gestured towards a living room chair. Not knowing what else to do, Jude sat on the edge, taking in his surroundings. Magazines haphazardly nearly fell off a coffee table. Someone’s sweater was thrown over the back of the couch. A pair of shoes lay tucked near a wall. One of them tipped on its side. A cold sweep of loneliness overwhelmed him, and he took a deep breath.

“I’m Jude Kinkade,” he quietly said. “I’m the Executive Vice President of the LA Devils. They’re…”

“I’ve heard of them,” Laura’s father interjected. “A basketball team. Not much of a basketball family here. Hockey’s more our speed.”

Smiling, he continued, “I’m Sam O’Donnell, and this is my wife, Moira. Now, son, why don’t you tell us what you know about our Laura’s birth brother.”

At the phrasing, Jude’s breath hitched, and he ducked his head to stare at the floor. He’d practiced this. Be straight up and tell Laura that her brother had loved her. That he’d been building up the courage, and working on his fear of rejection.

Oh what the hell was he doing?

“Son?” Sam asked, making Jude lift his flushed face to look at them. “You okay?”

Except he wasn’t.

And he shook his head.

He’d been so sure he could do this, and here he sat, falling apart in the home of complete goddam strangers. He looked up to watch understanding slowly slip over Moira’s face, and her hand came up to cover her mouth.

“It was him, wasn’t it?” she asked.

Jude just nodded. His voice seemed to be long gone, and not giving a shit about him in that moment.

“And you’re the fiancé,” she added, more a question than statement.

Again, Jude nodded.

“Sam, go get Laura, but take your time,” Moira said, never taking her eyes off Jude. “Give us just a few minutes, okay?”

So Sam left the room. A minute later, Jude heard him ascending the stairs.

“Laura tried to find him. _We_ tried to find him,” Moira said. “She remembered he liked sports, but that wasn’t much to go on. That his foster parents were mean to him. Said things. Hurt him. Called him worthless.”

“Called him Zero,” Jude choked. “Called him Zero ‘cause that’s what he was worth.”

“That poor boy,” Moira murmured, her eyes misting. Moira rose from the couch and approached Jude slowly. He rose when she took his hands and tugged him up. And then she wrapped her arms around him.

Jude didn’t cry the day Zero died. He didn’t cry at the funeral. Or at the wake. He’d held everything at bay for so so long. It took a woman he’d never met showing grief for a child she’d never met that brought him to his knees. Great sobs racked him as he buried his face in her shoulder. It took several minutes before he came back to his senses, and drew back.

“I’m really sorry,” he said, wiping a hand across his face.

“Seems like ya needed it,” Moira smiled at him, rubbing her hands across his still-wet cheeks. “If it had been my Sam, I’d be doin’ the same for years on end.”

“I had this all planned,” Jude said. “I had everything planned out in my head. How I was going to tell his sister about the brother that she’d lost, and who’d lost her. To tell her his story – the parts she doesn’t know or remember. To tell her that he did some ridiculously stupid things and hurt people along the way, but that’s because he’d left Gideon behind because it hurt so much. And to make sure she has what she needs. To take care of anything she needs.”

“You just did,” a woman’s voice said from the entryway to the living room. Her eyes watered, with silent tears occasionally streaking down to drip off her chin. She stopped just a foot in front of Jude, and asked a single question, “Did he ever get to be happy?”

Jude thought of the moment in the car, when Zero had taken his hand, kissed the palm while studiously ignoring the two women who sat opposite. He smiled at the memory of the ring (he still wore) slipping onto his finger, and the kiss, which Zero made purposely arousing and filthy to entertain Lionel and piss of Jelena. Finally, he nodded, and whispered, “Yeah. I think he finally was.”

They talked well into the night. Laura told him about studying social work at Boston University, with a plan to study Public Administration in graduate school. She wanted to be a policy maker – affect change that impacted kids like her and Zero. He told her about the house Zero grew up in, and how Zero bought it for them to rebuild. To create something just for them and build up the downtrodden neighborhood.

“I don’t know what to do now,” he confessed, biting his lower lip. “He bought it so we could make a home together.” He voice cracked when he said, “I can’t… without him… I can’t.”

“Then make it something bigger,” Laura replied, unhesitatingly, although her voice wavered. And she gave him a look that he’d seen Zero give him a hundred times before – generally when he had an idea that was going to be goddam brilliant are the biggest scandal of the year. It made Jude smile.

Zero had left him everything, knowing he would take care of Laura. Jude kept offering it to her – between the insane life insurance policy and the money in the bank, Jude just couldn’t bring himself to touch it. He wrote a check for the full amount to Laura, who ripped it up, and then told him to stop being stupid.

They spent the next three days meeting for meals, drinks, anything to spend time together. And the longer he spent with Laura, the more Jude saw Gideon as he would’ve been if life had been different.

Laura was sharp, thoughtful, and witty. She also had a wicked sense of snark, and could convey her displeasure with a look. But she was an open book, and one she was willing to share.

“I would’ve been okay with all the press,” she said. “My parents are rocks. They’re awesome. But they’re not my big brother. And I wouldn’t have minded.”

They hugged it out for about an hour on her parents couch over that. Then shared two bottles of wine and laughed their asses off over stories Jude told about Zero. Sam and Moira found them slurring their words, and comparing memories when they got home. Laura’s parents couldn’t tell whether the tears were happy or sad, but suspected both.

The O’Donnell family dropped Jude off at the airport three days later, with a promise to catch a flight out for the beginning of the next season. Although, Laura would be flying out the summer before.

Jude transferred the deed to Zero’s condo to Laura’s name so that she’d always have a home in California if she wanted it.

When the plane landed, it wasn’t Lionel that picked him up. To his surprise, Jelena pulled up, gestured impatiently for him to get in, and pulled away from the curb abruptly.

“You look a little less like crap,” she stated. “Any chance you might be productive now?”

Jude barked a laugh as she drove him home.

Laura arrived four months later. They’d been going back and forth the entire time, exchanging ideas. Swapping stories. Memories. Hopes. Dreams. Loneliness.

She came across as confident but held some of the ingrained insecurities Zero had – the same insecurities that were bred in a childhood lost too soon. Jude introduced her around the arena. Pete had done a double-take. She didn’t look overly like Zero, but she had his eyes – the way they watched, the way they assessed, not just the shape of them.

Lionel and Laura got along well, although Laura’s patience with the older woman sometimes turned into eye-rolls and snark. It was scary as hell that Laura preferred Jelena. They got along like a house on fire.

“I don’t know what those two are up to,” Jude confided one day to Pete as they watched the two women animatedly cross the arena, talking the entire time.

“I don’t think you want to,” Pete replied, and felt a cold shiver run up his spine once they were out of sight.

That might be true, but Jude thought Zero would be laughing his ass off.

Six weeks later, Jude and Laura walked through the front door of the Laura and Gideon Community Center. It contained a state of the art basketball court, functioning cafeteria, two additional versatile gymnasiums, and staff to help any child that walked through its doors. The Zero Kids Homeless Foundation was established to run it, using the rest of Zero’s estate, as well as incorporating some sizable donations from other Devils players and staff.

The week before opening day at Devil arena, a small startup sports journal received an article, written by graduate student Laura O’Donnell telling the story of a brother and sister, and the system that failed them. Jude had found the legal document changing Gideon’s name to Zero, and Laura had given a copy of her adoption case number. Those documents and a picture of a two small kids with popsicle lips arrived with the article. It didn’t take long to connect the dots.

Five days before the opening game, Gideon’s story was told.

Four days before the opening game, it was national headline news, and the media shit hit the proverbial fan.

Laura flipped off one overzealous reporter and threatened to shove the microphone up his ass when he didn’t back off. Jude laughed for ten solid minutes.

On opening day, SportsCenter featured the article, and had psychologists on the show who talked about sports as a reprieve from abuse – a safe zone for at-risk kids. They talked about sports being a place where kids could lose themselves to something positive, and get away from their current situation.

Laura and her parents stood proudly when she was introduced during the halftime show. Jude stood on the sidelines, watching as Zero’s smirk was splashed on the big screen.

Not a day went by when Zero wasn’t in Jude’s thoughts as soon as he woke, and the last thought before he shut his eyes. But the knife wound in his heart had begun to heal. He watched the split screen of Laura’s picture next to Zero’s and sighed.

She walked forward and pulled Jude unceremoniously onto the floor, kissed his cheek, and half-tackled him into a hug, pulling a smile from the somber man.

It didn’t come full circle, though, until she hugged him at the airport the next day and said, “Gideon loved you enough to be your family. I guess that makes you my brother.”

After that proclamation, which turned them both into blubbering fools, she bolted into the airport, stopping only once she got past the doors to turn and wave.

Jude smiled.

He wasn’t sure if he’d ever really be happy again - not like all those months with Zero – but it was a start. It was enough.


End file.
